


Nobody on the Road

by Mortissimo



Category: Watchmen (TV), Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Haunting, Multi, Post-Finale, Season/Series 01 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21913396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortissimo/pseuds/Mortissimo
Summary: Karnak was home to a lot of ghosts, some more literal than others. One of them with particularly unfinished business follows Wade home.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "I see nobody on the road," said Alice.
> 
> "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked in a fretful tone. "To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!"

Antarctica was the emptiest place Wade had ever seen, he thought, staring out the hangar doors at the echoing white. Even mostly windless, like this, all he could see was a field of blue, suddenly interrupted by a field of white. No breaks in either. 

" _ Detective _ ." The loudspeaker crackle made Wade jump, glancing over his shoulder at the odd little bird ship. Somehow, hypnotized by the howling emptiness outside, he'd missed the sound of the engines starting up, and now it hovered not too far behind, Agent Blake staring at him through the dome window. 

"Sorry," he told her as he buckled himself into the other chair, but she was already shaking her head. 

"No, this place is nuts. I just want to get back as soon as we can. Even if we are…" Blake fell silent as the ship moved quietly out of the hangar, her expression studiedly blank.  _ Too late _ , she didn't need to say. Wade knew. 

"You been here a lot?" He asked, frowning out the window. It almost looked like there was something out there, just for a second. A blur in brown and grey.

"Oh fuck no." Blake snorted. "Twice, that's all. Even that was too much. I guess this makes it three times. Got here the same way two of those times, and it sucked every time." There was definitely something out there. As they circled around to the front of the ruin, clear as day beside the front door, there was… Something. Someone. Small, growing smaller as the ship rose, brown and grey against the field of white. 

"I think there's someone down there," Wade muttered, but a moment later he blinked as the sun caught on the ice, blinding him, and when the spots cleared… Nothing. 

"What was that?" Blake asked, but Wade shook his head. Just the ruins of the massive tomb, and miles of nothing, unbroken by so much as a footprint. “Fine, have it your way,” Blake shrugged, then added under her breath, “I sure hope Adrian fixed the ice problem.” 

“The what?” Blake just shook her head.

“Oh, never mind," she said, mimicking. "See how annoying that is? This isn’t going to be a quick flight, unless the engines freeze and we crash and die.” 

“Is that likely?” Blake shrugged. 

“Apparently it happened last time this thing was flown down here for very long. Well, they crashed, anyway. They didn’t die.”

“Not in the crash,” came a weak, harsh voice, echoing in the back of the ship. Veidt must’ve woken up, and he sounded awful, almost like a different person. Voice both higher and rougher. Blake didn’t respond, so Wade looked, but Veidt hadn’t moved from where he was slumped over on the floor, handcuffed to a rail. Odd time to play possum, but Wade supposed anybody would get a little weird stranded on a moon of Jupiter, and Veidt seemed like he’d started pretty weird. Wade faced front in time to see a grey-blue wave crash over the ship and he shuddered hard, but Blake looked as unflappable as ever, so presumably the ship was still doing what she wanted. The force’s fleet didn’t go underwater like this, but there wasn’t much call for it in Oklahoma. 

“The water’s warmer than the air, right? As long as we don’t surface until… Hell, Louisiana, I guess? We should be fine, right?” Like she thought maybe he should have an answer, Blake looked at Wade.

“No idea, sorry. I guess so. Ours don’t go underwater.” Blake banked sharply to avoid a flock of penguins, and Wade found himself wishing for more seatbelt. Maybe a handle. “Wouldn’t it be faster to go by air?” They’d be less likely to hit anything, that way. Wade wasn’t sure how this thing would handle an iceberg, but he was willing to bet he wouldn’t like it. 

“When we get to the South Pacific, maybe. I  _ really _ don’t want to crash.”

“Fly like you do,” Veidt muttered, still sounding awful gravely, and when Wade glanced at him, he was still pretending to be unconscious. Blake didn’t dignify his complaints with a response, so Wade figured he should let it go too. 

The ship settled into a tense sort of silence. Under different circumstances, Wade supposed it might’ve been peaceful, deep enough now in the water that the only creatures dodging out of the way of the ship’s headlights were darting fish, the light from above filtered into a dim blue, but not knowing what had happened to his city, to Angela, was like a knife lodged under his sternum. It was the same for Blake, he supposed, glancing at her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and her grim expression. Maybe worse. 

Beyond that, beyond Blake’s piloting skill or reasonable anxiety, there was an eerie cold prickling at the back of Wade’s neck that he couldn’t really explain. At first he thought it might’ve been uneasiness at Veidt behind them, but looking right at the man didn’t evoke that feeling, just the same disappointment and old, smoldering anger that he’d been nursing since he’d seen Senator Keene’s video. No, this was different, like going to bed after watching too many horror films. Wade kept thinking he saw flickering in the corner of his eye, a shadow like roiling smoke, but when he turned to look right at it, there was nothing there. 

“You gonna be all right if I try to get some sleep?” Wade asked finally, what must have been hours after they’d gone underwater, the adrenaline from the whole ordeal finally seeping out of him. It’d been days since he’d last slept, he realized, between getting jumped by the Kavalry in his own home and ending up here, at the literal ends of the Earth. 

“Go ahead. This thing can fly itself pretty well, even if I do pass out, but I don’t think I’m gonna be able to sleep until we land and I can shoot somebody.” That didn’t seem to warrant a response, so Wade shut his eyes and folded his arms over his chest, slumping as far as he could in the chair without falling out. To his surprise, he found himself spiralling quickly into sleep, his last clear thought a flash of irritation at Veidt’s muttering to himself at the back of the ship.

  
  
  
  


When he opened his eyes, it was to the same howling, white emptiness he’d been watching out the hangar door. The wind had whipped up, lashing at his hair and freezing the tears as they leaked unwillingly out of him. His throat hurt from screaming, his hands clenched tight into fists at his sides. It was almost impossible to keep his eyes open, between the wind, the sunlight off the snow, and the bright blue glow of the being in front of him, detached and implacable. 

“ _ Do it! _ ” He screamed again, and as Dr. Manhattan raised his hand, Wade heard Angela’s voice behind him, raised in an agonizing protest. 

  
  
  
  


Wade, thrashing, fought his way out of his seatbelt and to his feet, heart racing, to find Agent Blake already standing and staring warily.

“You good, Wade?” She asked cautiously, sinking back into her chair. Shakily, he nodded, raking his hands back through his hair. He must’ve slept longer than he’d thought, as the ocean was dark around them now, but for the ship’s headlights piercing out into the murk. 

“Nightmare, I guess,” he ventured, though it wasn’t like any nightmare he’d had before. It didn’t have the feel of a dream--Wade could still feel the burn of the wind on his cheeks. 

“You get nightmares like that often?” Wade frowned, considering. 

“Not really.” His nightmares, the ones that woke him screaming and the ones that left him paralyzed, were creatures of the horror of helplessness. There had been some of that in this dream, but above and beyond what he’d felt, tying his throat in knots and clenching his hands until his ragged nails bit into the leather of his gloves, was rage. White-hot, betrayed, helpless rage. A little like what he’d felt when Angela had told him the truth about Judd, a little like what he’d felt watching Veidt of the 80s smirking smugly into the camera, but a bonfire, an inferno, where Wade’s anger had been a candle. A supernova of rage, leaving Wade emptied out and shaking in its wake. 

“Well try to keep it down, would you. Some of us are still trying to sleep.” Apparently unconsciousness had been good for Veidt, as he was back to sounding like himself again. Blake did finally turn, staring back at the man like he was something she’d scrape off her shoe. 

“I’m sure you can sleep it off at the Hague,” she snapped, as Veidt struggled into more of a sitting position. 

“You seem awfully sure they aren’t going to see things my way. For all you know, they’ll hail me as a hero. You can’t deny that what I did saved the world.”

“Megalomaniac.” Wade blinked, because that time, he’d been looking right at Veidt, and that bitter rasp had very, very clearly not come from him. “Hasn’t changed. Will never change. Never regret.” 

“Tell it to the three million people you killed,” Agent Blake responded, overlapping with the disembodied voice, as though she hadn’t heard it. A chill ran down Wade’s spine.

“A sacrifice, for the good of seven billion. You agreed with me, at the time. You all did.”

“ _ Not. All, _ ” the voice ground out, suddenly louder and so close to Wade that he couldn’t fight back the flinch. Veidt’s eyes immediately snapped to him, lighting with a self-satisfied, sadistic glee. 

“She didn’t tell you that, did she? That she was at Karnak on that day? She couldn’t have stopped me, of course, I’d already done it when she got there, but she could’ve brought me in. Could’ve convinced her big blue boyfriend, or the feathery one for that matter. But no, the only one with a spine was the little freak, and Manhattan splattered him across my doorstep.” Wade froze, the sense memory hitting him with a flash, of the split second before the darkness, when his body had begun to rip itself into particulate. 

“Little freak?” He managed, watched Veidt’s face collapse into confusion. Sure, later he might find other parts of that to fixate on, when he wasn’t hearing voices. 

“He means Rorschach,” Blake said heavily, when it became clear Veidt wasn’t going to. “Jon killed Rorschach when it became clear he wasn’t gonna back down and keep Adrian’s secret.” The voice rumbled next to Wade, surprised. Assessing. 

“You can hear me,” the voice said, right in his ear, and Wade couldn’t stop himself from leaning subtly away. “You  _ can _ . Can you see me?” There was a flicker in the light, but it could’ve been a fish swimming past the headlights, could have been anything but a  _ god damn ghost _ . Wade shook his head mutely. “Hrm.” 

“You didn’t think it through, did you? That putting me on trial will mean tarnishing Jon’s memory. It’ll probably cost you your job, at the very least, if you don’t end up in a cell next to me. And speaking of cells, I’m sure this won’t do wonders for the likelihood Daniel will ever see daylight again.” That did make Blake flinch, turning back to the pilot’s chair. 

“I  _ have to _ ,” she ground out, digging her nails into the headrest. “Daniel will understand. God knows Jon would have. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you don’t. Everyone always assumed you were just playing the part of the aloof genius, but you’re a genuine sociopath, aren’t you?”

“Obviously,” the voice scoffed.

“I should’ve known you didn’t truly understand me,” Veidt said, and Wade could hear leather creaking under Blake’s hands. "You always did seem to lack a certain depth of vision–"

“I think maybe you ought to shut up now,” Wade advised Veidt, watching Blake grit her teeth at the black ocean. 

“Listen, it was the only thing a reasonable man could–” 

“I still got the wrench,” Wade snapped, hearing echoes of Keene’s threats echoing in his ears as clear as the other voice he was hearing. Anybody who started out calling himself reasonable was bound to be anything but. At least it shut Veidt up, settling back against the bulkhead with a scowl. Good. Probably wouldn’t do to let Agent Blake rip him to shreds before they could get him on trial. Wade settled back in his chair, foregoing the belt now that they seemed to be out in open ocean. 

“Is Manhattan… Dead?” The voice asked finally, sounding hesitant for the first time. Wade nodded, not quite willing to let Agent Blake and Veidt know he was either haunted or hallucinating. “Nnh. Unexpected. How?” Wade thought about it for a moment.

“What do you think are the odds Trieu got his powers before we could stop her?” He asked Blake at last. She didn’t look at him, staring bleakly into the ocean. 

“I guess we’ll know if we surface and there’s a little pissed-off blue goddess waiting for us,” she said, laughing without humor. “Part of me feels like I’d know, like I can feel an absence in the universe now that I wouldn’t if all that power had gone somewhere other than just away, but I don’t really feel anything right now.” 

“I’m sorry,” Wade said, as the voice grunted beside him. 

"A good man, once. Shouldn't have that much power. Nothing human can." Wade couldn't bring himself to disagree with the voice. The ghost. 

After a long while in silence, Wade glanced back to Blake and was surprised to see her curled up in the pilot's chair, head pillowed on her elbow. Adrenaline must have finally worn off. A glance toward the back showed Veidt either asleep or pretending again, leaving Wade more or less alone in the ship. More or less.

"What are you?" He whispered, barely loud enough to hear from even the distance he'd last heard the voice at, but he got an answer nonetheless. 

"I think you know," it whispered back flatly. 

"I'm not sure I believe in ghosts."

"Not sure I believe in you." Wade muffled the urge to laugh. "Wasn't sure I believed in me either. It was silent for a very long time. Even before, nobody heard me." 

"So why me?"

"Why you, indeed. Don't know. Didn't see many people. None of them saw me. Veidt, maybe, in dreams. Couldn't go far." 

"From where you were killed?" 

"Yes." Wade shivered. "This Trieu… Small woman? Oriental? Very… Ostentatious?"

"Yeah," Wade answered, supposing all of those fit the reclusive millionaire. "Why?"

"Saw her once, I think. She came to Karnak. Upset Veidt. Not sure what they talked about. Manhattan sent him away not long after." 

"Weird," Wade said, and the ghost grunted agreement. "I feel like I'm missing most of the story."

"Imagine how I feel," the ghost groused. This time, Wade did laugh before he could stop himself, a muffled huff of a noise. 

“I must’ve finally lost it,” Wade muttered aloud to himself. Like he had been doing for the past few minutes. Talking to the ghost of a man whose ghosts he’d spent the last three years taking down. Wade believed in a lot of things, off and on, but the number had dropped sharply pretty recently, and he just didn’t think he could add literal ghosts to the mix. 

“Still don’t believe I’m real. Hm. Don’t blame you.” The voice moved away as it spoke, and Wade could almost picture a squirrely little man in a brown trenchcoat pacing the length of the ship. “Come here,” it said at last, somewhere toward the back of the ship. Wade rose, anxiously glancing back at the little blinking autopilot light, and took a step toward the back.

“You know I still can’t see you,” he reminded the ghost. Himself. Whichever. 

“Over here,” the voice said again, and Wade turned that way. “Cot, folds down from the wall,” the voice said, and then stopped, which Wade assumed meant he was supposed to fold the cot down.

“This is stupid,” he muttered, but did it anyway. The thing was longer than he’d expected, all stretched out, like it’d been built specifically for tall people, by tall people. The Tulsa police ships definitely didn’t have those. 

“Back left corner. Don’t read it aloud.” Frowning, Wade stretched across the narrow pad and felt along the edge until something bumped up against his fingertips, then tugged until a folded piece of paper fell out, with a crescent moon scrawled on it in a heavy hand. 

“What is this supposed to be?” Wade asked, turning it over in his hands. He felt uneasy now, finding it difficult to come to terms with the fact that his problems may be paranormal instead of mental, this time. Was it better to be losing his mind, or haunted by the ghost of a long-dead vigilante? 

“Read it,” the voice insisted, “just not out loud.” With careful hands, Wade unfolded the note and squinted at it under the dim track lighting.The salutation had been crossed out heavily, though Wade could just about make out a ‘Dear D–.’ The rest of the letter… Wade sat on the edge of the cot, and read, and when he got to the end he silently folded it back up again and dropped his face into his hands. The day had left him boneless, wrung out with terror and anger, but the part of him with any feeling left put serious thought toward crying. 

“Jesus,” he murmured into his palms. No wonder. They’d all had to read excerpts from Rorschach’s journal, after White Night, both the new recruits and the few returning officers, which had given them all the impression that they maybe understood Rorschach. But the journal itself said it’d been edited, and the version the police were allowed to read from was edited yet more, and Wade hadn’t really grasped how incomplete the picture was. He hadn’t thought of Rorschach as a human, so much as a symbol; he guessed nobody had, probably not since D, whoever that was. The aforementioned Daniel, maybe. Well. It certainly added dimension to the man.

“Now you believe?” Rorschach asked, voice soft and close, and when Wade looked up, it was into a roiling cloud of smoke a few spare inches from his face. 

Wade scrambled back, over the cot, until his back hit the cold bunkhead with a  _ clang _ . A few feet away, Veidt say up sharply, grimacing as the movement tweaked his cuffed arm. Wade and Rorschach’s ghost both froze. The only unclothed part of the ghost was a roiling mass of smoke where most people would have a face, lending an additional layer of comedy to his awkwardly frozen body language. Wade almost thought he could make out something like an expression in the constantly moving cloud, but nothing like any features. 

It was Agent Blake who finally broke the silence, leaning over the back of her chair.

“Go the fuck back to sleep, both of you,” she snapped, and Veidt rolled over to face the back of the ship with a grumble. Slowly, Wade turned back to the ghost that had once been Rorschach.    
“I believe you,” he mouthed, and the ghost drew back, regarding him with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. 

“Can see me now, too. Hmm. Interesting.” Wade nodded. Rorschach was… Well, the wisps of smoke curled out a fair distance, but Wade guessed Rorschach wasn’t much taller than he was. Or hadn’t been. His clothing looked grubby and worn, a brown trenchcoat buttoned and belted tightly over a scarf that had once been white, and what looked, by implication of the cuffs, like a purple pinstripe suit. 

"Why now?" Rorschach mused. "Why you?"

"I don't understand anything that's happened to me this whole damn week," Wade muttered, scrubbing his hands over his face. He still felt naked without the reflectatine. The shitty mask he'd almost thrown up in had been a poor substitute, but taking one of his spares would've been too much of a risk. 

“You a vigilante?” Wade shook his head.

“Detective,” he said. Rorschach  _ hrm _ ed at him. “We wear masks, though, these days. In Tulsa anyhow.” 

“Odd,” Rorschach said, the smoke twisting in a way that looked displeased. “Bad idea.” 

“Why?” Not that Wade couldn’t think of a few reasons himself, and not that life hadn’t provided a plethora of reasons recently, but he wanted to hear it from one of the more infamous violators of the Keene Act. 

“Cops are meant to protect. Have an obligation to the people. Vigilantes… Avenge. Only obligation to ourselves. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. Making cops vigilantes… No accountability. Bad idea.”

“Huh,” Wade said, leaning back into the bulkhead. “Well, it’s working out pretty bad for Tulsa, so this’ll probably be the end of it soon.”

“Why?” It was Rorschach’s turn to ask, but Wade shook his head.

“Later.” This was not a conversation he could have at a whisper, especially not with the person, thing, whatever, that he planned to have it with. Apparently mollified, the mass of smoke in place of Rorschach’s head bobbed up and down, and he resumed pacing in eerie silence. 

“Sleep,” he said, and Wade realized he must’ve been watching the ghost move for a long time. “Trust Archie’s autopilot. Will wake you up if something goes wrong. Sleep.” 

Somehow, Wade did. 

  
  
  


This time, there were no dreams. What woke him was the rolling of the ship, followed by the sharp slap of daylight on his face, streaming in through the front windows. There was no moment of doubt or confusion, unfortunately; as soon as he opened his eyes, he could see the ghost of Rorschach sitting in the co-pilot's chair, staring straight ahead. In the full daylight, he looked even stranger, like he was still in full shadow even in the light, even as Wade could see the light  _ through _ him. As though he sensed eyes on him, the ghost twisted around, as its smoke made and unmade features. 

"Oh good," Agent Blake said, "you're up." She didn't look pleased, as Wade rounded the co-pilot's chair and waited for Rorschach to move so he could sit, but Wade so far hadn't much liked it when she did look pleased. "You know, I forgot this thing had a bed. I don't know how you found it, but when I woke up and had to realign my spine, I was a little jealous." Rorschach moved at last, not much out of the chair as through it, and Wade took his place. 

"We don't have them in Tulsa either, but I might make a few suggestions when I get back." 

"Yeah, well. It'll be a few hours yet before we'll see how much of Tulsa is even left to police." Wade watched the rapidly expanding line of brown and green on the horizon, and tried to tamp down the panic trying to climb up his throat. 

"We'll see."


	2. Chapter 2

Apart from a few unfortunate birds, the remainder of the flight back to Oklahoma was relatively unremarkable. Apparently the ship's stealth tech from 1985 was well ahead of its time, enough that a world largely at peace, or at least a USA largely at peace, hadn't advanced to overtake it. Agent Blake evidently couldn't sleep, or didn't want to, which meant Wade's conversation with the ghost was on hold unless he wanted to get hauled in for additional psych evals on top of what his inevitable suspension would include. The ghost ended up spending most of his time crouched near Veidt, focused on the side of his head like he could make himself appear to the man by sheer willpower. For all Wade knew, he could have been right, but if Veidt saw so much as a flicker of smoke, he didn't react, and after being shut down so hard earlier, Veidt was no longer in a mood to talk. No problem for Wade; he'd been through a divorce, and knew his way around a protracted tense silence. 

Soon enough, the swamps dried out far below them, and Blake turned to regard Wade. 

"So, as you probably guessed, your bunker is a crime scene right now, or it was when I last owned a cell phone. I'm landing this thing in Tulsa PD's hangar, and then I'm enacting what's gonna look a hell of a lot like martial law on the department. It's gonna be a long time before I eat, shower or sleep again, and I could use your help. _However_ , you went off the grid three days ago, you have puke on your pants, and frankly you smell like unwashed ass. So, knowing that I ask this as someone who has been in smelling distance of you for a whole lot of hours and would have to be for a whole lot more, you want me to drop you off at home first?" Blake raised her eyebrows, making it clear there was only one correct response. 

"Yes, ma'am," Wade said obediently, and Blake gave him a thin smile. 

"Good answer." Blake turned back to the controls, checking on a panel that displayed something incomprehensible to Wade. "Now, I do want to see you back at work soon, because I'd like to have someone there I trust not to be a racist asshole or complete psychopath, Detective Abar will probably be AWOL for a little while, and I don't think the Russian and the pirate girl meet both of my qualifications." 

"They're not so bad," Wade objected, then considered his co-workers again. "All right, Red Scare is about what he looks like, but Pirate Jenny's not bad. And nobody knows procedure better than Panda."

"If you say so," Blake said, but she didn't sound entirely sarcastic. Wade watched the country rolling past under them, and completely against his will, the question that had been crawling up his throat finally pushed out between his teeth.

"You really think she made it?" At least Blake didn't do him the disservice of asking who he was talking about. Hands still on the control panel, she watched out the window for a moment, gathering her thoughts. 

"I haven't known her very long, but Angela strikes me as tougher than most nails, and twice as sharp. If anybody could make it out of that deathtrap, she could. Yes, I think she made it." Wade slumped down in his chair, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes until he saw colors. 

"She better," he muttered, and decided not to respond to the gravelly hum he heard at the back of the ship.

Sooner than Wade had thought, the lines of trees and highways began to take on familiar shapes, and the skyline of home rose on the horizon. They'd been gone long enough that anything smoldering had long since been extinguished. Wade had never been so glad to live on the outskirts of town; if he'd had to fly over the five blocks he'd helped Veidt condemn to squidfall railgun, he wasn't sure what he'd do. 

Agent Blake declined to actually take the time to land the ship, instead unrolling a rope ladder to the ground before gesturing at him to get a move on. Wade glanced at Rorschach, curious to see if he'd float or climb, but it turned out the answer was neither; as soon as Wade had climbed out of the ship's hatch and lost sight of Rorschach, he looked down to see the ghost already waiting for him on the ground, smoke and coat strangely unruffled by the ship's engines. The moment Wade's feet touched the ground, Blake wasted no time in pulling up the ladder and rising back into the sky, the bottom of the ship wavery and uncomfortable to look at. Rorschach, in the open daylight, was also wavery and uncomfortable to look at. 

"Miss Juspecyzk also police now? In Oklahoma?" Now that he'd had time to look at it, Wade was pretty sure he could pick expressions out of the swirling cloud that stood in for Rorshach's face, and that expression had to be confusion. Wade admitted to a little confusion himself.

"You mean Agent Blake? No, she's FBI. Vigilante hunter. Got sent to Tulsa after…" Wade hesitated. This conversation had real potential to turn into a shouting match, and while he didn't really have anything like close neighbors, he still didn't want to have a shouting match with thin air on his front lawn. "Let me shower first, then I'll explain." 

"Finally saw the virtues of her father," Rorschach mused inscrutably, as Wade moved past him, toward the house. "Interesting." 

Whatever the limits of this haunting were, Rorschach seemed content to wander silently through Wade's dusty living room as Wade stepped into the bathroom, which Wade was grateful for. Trying to shower in front of a judgemental cloud in a flasher coat didn't sound like his idea of a good time. The temptation to stay under the pounding spray was great, but not as great as his doubts regarding even a dead vigilante's patience, so Wade scrubbed down as quickly and efficiently as he could. The closet brought up him short for a moment, afterward, but between jeans and suit, he had to go with suit; Agent Blake's patience also seemed limited, and he didn't want to get hauled into a crisis dressed for the weekend. Finally, one choice left, and after some deliberation, Wade jammed the spare mask in his coat pocket and the spare cap on his head, then threw open the door to the living room.

Nobody there.

There was nobody in the dining room either, and nobody in the den. Nobody in the guest bedroom or bathroom. Nobody in the basement. 

"Well I'll be," Wade muttered, perplexed. "it can't be that easy." There was no way on God's green earth, after the week he'd been through, that Wade had managed to shake himself out of either a haunting or a hallucination with a simple shower and change of clothes. Flummoxed, he pulled his cap off to rake a hand back through his drying hair, and nearly threw himself back down the basement stairs when Rorschach reappeared an inch from his face, roaring and raging like a thunderstorm. 

" _Jesus, Mary and Joseph_ ," Wade gasped, bringing Rorschach to a halt, fists raised as though about to strike. 

"Couldn't see me anymore," the ghost guessed, and Wade nodded, staring down at the silver lining sewn into his cap. "What is that?"

"Reflectatine. Mask's made out of it too. It's supposed to block out psychic energies, I just haven't… Tested it. Before." Slowly, holding what would have been eye contact if Rorschach had eyes, Wade raised the baseball cap and dropped it back on his head, and once again the ghost vanished like it should've done with the first ray of sunshine. "I guess it really works." When he took it off again, Rorschach had retreated out of his personal space, wearing that confused impression again. 

"Could just block me out now," Rorschach pointed out warily. Wade shook his head.

"I think knowing a ghost I can't see is there and pissed off is worse than being able to see a ghost." Rorschach made what Wade was beginning to assume from context was a noise of agreement. 

"Explain what you've been avoiding, then." Wade edged around Rorschach, toward the back door and the defiled bunker. At the corner of his eye, he could see the light on his answering machine blinking, and sidestepped it as well. Later.

“Come on, I think I’m gonna want visual aids for this, and given a choice between crime scene and the office, I’d rather not explain to thin air at the office.” It wasn’t like most of his colleagues didn’t already think Wade was nuts, but he’d prefer not to confirm their suspicions. Besides, the impression he got from Agent Blake was that there wouldn’t much in the way of free time for discussion. 

The bunker door was sealed off with tape, quickly and efficiently sliced through with a knife grabbed from the kitchen. To Wade’s surprise, the lights came on when he hit the switch; someone must’ve already found the breaker box. There were no bodies left, of course, just tape outlines on the floor and slumped against the wall, arcs of blood and recently excavated bullet holes in the concrete fleshing out the story. The place was still a mess, of course, and Wade supposed he’d have to hold off on cleaning it until he got officially cleared. Good thing he didn’t mind the smell of blood too much. 

“Ambush?” Seeing the ghost of Rorschach standing in the middle of the ruins of his home was disconcerting. Last time he was here, Wade had stood among cooling bodies of the vigilante’s cheap knockoffs, trying to figure out which mask was least blood-soaked.

“Yeah.” 

“Stupid.” Wade frowned at Rorschach, waiting for an explanation. After a moment of silence, the ghost turned back to him. “Them. Thinking they could get the jump on you in your home. Didn’t know who you were?”

“Nah, they knew. Kavalry’s maybe not the best at critical thinking.” It was at once a blessing and a curse, being the little guy. Being constantly underestimated. Wade figured Rorschach understood. 

“Kavalry… A gang?” Ah, Wade thought, here we go. 

“Sort of.” Wade stepped over an overturned bookcase to get to his desk, gingerly shuffling some debris out of the way. It wasn’t like he’d killed anybody on it, so it shouldn’t hurt his case too bad. From the desk, he pulled out the first of the overstuffed file folders, and started spreading photos over the desk’s surface. 

“They’re a white supremacist organization. Alt-right. Uh, hick neo-Nazis," Wade clarified before the ghost could ask for clarification. At the corner of Wade's vision, Rorschach waited, shifting in impatience. 

“They were around for a while, but about three years back, they went to just about every cop’s home in Tulsa, killed them and their families. That’s why they repealed the Keene Act. Why we wear masks in Tulsa.” 

“Still a bad idea,” Rorschach muttered, “but I understand now.”

“Yeah, well.” Wade hesitated, resting a hand at the base of the desk lamp. Here came the moment of truth. At least he knew he could just wear the mask, if he had to shut Rorschach out. If he turned out to have been the person everyone thought he was. Unexpectedly, Wade found he was bracing himself for disappointment. 

“Detective?” Rorschach prompted, irritation coloring his staticky voice. “Might be dead, but your time is likely not infinite. Go on.”

“Fine. You know how all good fanatics have a book? Turns out this ultra-right-wing publication got ahold of a real doozy in the 80s, published an edited version independently. It didn’t really take off until much later, but these fellas really saw themselves in the main character and his views. Lot of stuff about the American dream in danger, that kind of thing. Seventh Kavalry decided to update their classic white hoods in his image.” Spine prickling with apprehension, Wade clicked the desk light on and stepped back. Moment of truth. Rorschach looked from Wade to the desk’s surface, gloved hands clenching and unclenching at his side. 

“I–” he started, then stopped, stepping a bare inch forward. Was that excitement or horror holding him back? There was only so much you could read from the tense line of a stranger’s shoulders. 

Finally, all at once, Rorschach took the last few rushing steps toward the desk, not bothering to go around or over the shelf in his way. A hard shudder ran through him once, head to toe, and then he just… Stopped. Even the swirling smoke that formed his head froze in place, for the first time giving a clear impression of drawn eyebrows, snarling teeth.

Thank God, Wade thought. 

“ _What_ ,” Rorschach hissed, his voice more growl than word, more noise than signal, “ _the_ **_fuck_ **.”

The pain that lanced through Wade’s skull was like being struck by lightning. He’d only felt anything like it once before, and every night since he’d lain awake in terror he might feel it again. Then it was gone, and the floor was rushing up at him, and then everything was merciful, peaceful blackness. 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the letter, and if I get to the end I guess I'll post it. I've always loved Rorschach for some unfathomable reason, and Looking Glass is so much like him, but with the ugly parts (like misogyny) removed or sanded down. Anyway, yes, another WIP, kind of sorry. There are some ship beats at some point, but not yet, so I'm not tagging them yet. 
> 
> If you want to experience the fandom (and everything else) ADHD from close up, I'm whollyunnecessary on Tumblr.


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